Adult children’s unemployment and parental depressive symptoms.

CEDAR seminar with Jordi Gumà Lao, Department of Political and Social Sciences , University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona and Department of Sociology, Umeå University

[Don’t worry, (s)he is a grown-up!] Adult children’s unemployment and parental depressive symptoms.

One of the demographic phenomena common to European countries in recent decades is the progressive decrease in the number of children that women end up having. This has meant that parents can devote more resources to providing their children with the best possible opportunities when they reach adulthood. Among these resources, education stands out as a factor associated with future opportunities in the labor market. However, little is known about the actual impact of adult children's labor market experiences on parental mental health.

This research provides the first comprehensive evidence on such intergenerational cross-over effects by exploring possible dimensions of heterogeneity in how parental depressive symptoms are related to adult children's unemployment. We also provide insights into how gender of adult children and their parents act as possible moderators.

To address our research questions, we apply general structural equation modeling to data from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Preliminary results point to gender differences in the relationship between adult children's unemployment and parents' mental health (mothers' depression seems to be more affected by their children's employment status, with a larger effect compared to their male partners when we focus on daughters).